A Portrait of This Season’s Holiday Shoppers, by the Numbers

As we enter the final stretch of the holiday shopping season, a picture emerges of today’s consumers. Among other things, the stats show that we’re buying more online, we’re buying more for ourselves, we’re using credit cards less, we’d be willing to shop in our underwear if it meant avoiding long lines at cash registers, and, perhaps surprisingly, by and large we’re still shopping at the mall. Also: A little over 23 million of us are procrastinators who feel the need to pick up last-minute gifts on December 24.

Here’s a roundup of stats concerning today’s holiday shoppers:

14 Percentage increase in online shopping dollars spent the week ending December 17, which just so happened to be Free Shipping Day. Overall, per comScore, $5.5 billion in merchandise was sold online during what was the busiest e-retailing week ever. Free shipping offers had to have played a role here: 52.7% of online orders came with free shipping, compared to 40.6% of orders placed in the corresponding week in 2009.

23.1 Number, in millions, of American consumers—15% of the population aged 16 and up—who plan on shopping on Christmas Eve; 18% of men and 19% of women also say they’re going to go shopping the day after Christmas